This is a rather long description, but for those of you who plan to climb
Pigeon Peak (or Pigeon & Turret) alone, please read on.

On Saturday September 2nd Terri Horvath, Echart Roder, and myself drove to
Silverton and took the narrow gauge railroad train to the Needle Creek
station. Our objective was Pigeon Peak.

Two things to note regarding the train: This year they are letting
backpackers make reservations from the Silverton side, and they have raised
the round trip ticket price (roundtrip Durango to Needleton $53.00,
roundtrip Silverton to Needleton $30.00). In the past they would allow
backpackers to start from Silverton on "standby," but did not allow advance
reservations.

Our group was only interested in climbing Pigeon Peak, so we decided to try
a much more direct approach, rather then the Ruby Creak approach described
in the Garrett & Martin book. Ruby Lake is a great place to camp if you plan
to climb multiple peaks in the area, but not exactly the most strategic
place to camp for just Pigeon Peak. In fact, if you do the Ruby Creek
approach for Pigeon Peak, you wind up completely circumnavigating the
mountain!

Our plan was to approach Pigeon Peak via the unnamed drainage directly
north of the Pigeon creak drainage. We set up Camp 1 the first night 15
minutes away from the Needleton station in a large meadow which marks the
start of the traditional Ruby Creek approach, as we were to take this trail
for at least the first few miles of our approach.

Not having any information on this route except for a thumbs-up "it goes"
from Jennifer & Gerry Roach (undoubtedly their new highest 100 book will
provide an excellent description for this route), our first idea was to
bushwhack directly up the drainage from the point where the Ruby Creek trail
crosses the unnamed creek. Ha ha! You would need stilts and a large machete
to make any progress up that creek. At this point we decided to "adjust" our
plan and approach our drainage via the west ridge of Pigeon Peak (AKA "we'll
take the high road"), picking up the ridge further up along the Ruby Creek
trail. We planned to exit the trail at this point and follow the ridge to
about 11,700'. From there we would traverse south until we reached a huge
flat open area right above treeline.

It worked, it went, and this is definitely the shortest approach to Pigeon
Peak, but I would not recommend this route to anyone without good
routefinding and map and compass skills. We used all of our routefinding
skills and a little bit of luck to get to our destination for camp 2. It
took us about 5 hours. As with most of the approaches in this area, it was
the "backpack from hell" with long steep relentless sections.

We set up Camp 2 in the huge flat meadow directly west of the summit, at
11,700'. This is a beautiful area, definitely away from the crowds, and the
perfect spot to start a climb of Pigeon Peak. From here we followed the
traditional route up Pigeon Peak, and were on the summit in 2.5 hours.

There was about 6 inches of fresh snow in the area on September 1st, and
there was still some lingering on the day of our climb, just enough to get
our attention!

After summiting the peak, we got back to camp early, and decided to take
the dreaded trip down, hoping to retrace our steps. It was a good idea to
return to Camp 1 the same day as the climb, as it allowed us plenty of time
for the routefinding on the descent. It took us a good 3.5 hours, and the
next day we were very glad that we didn't have to wake up early and rush
down to catch the 10:45 train back to Silverton.